September 20, 2025 – On the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA80) in New York, the Nigerian Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale (N-ATLAS) was officially launched as an open-source resource designed to map and digitize Nigeria’s linguistic heritage while creating datasets to support inclusive artificial intelligence solutions. N-ATLAS is Nigeria’s multilingual and multimodal large language model.
Honourable Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, who led the launch, described the initiative as a major step for Nigeria in digital transformation. “N-ATLAS represents our commitment to ensuring Nigeria’s languages and people are active participants in the global digital future,” he stated.
The project was developed by the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy and powered by Awarri, in partnership with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR).
Officials explained that N-ATLAS is designed to map Nigeria’s rich linguistic diversity and build AI-powered datasets to enhance digital inclusion across Africa. The open-source model can be accessed at https://huggingface.co/NCAIR1/N-ATLaS, offering researchers and developers tools to advance innovation in artificial intelligence and data-driven solutions.
